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PNG wants Aus help to boost its Asian profile

Jemima GarrettUpdated
Mon 6 May 2013, 7:24 PM AEST

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill wants Australia to help him boost PNG's profile in Asia. Like Australia, PNG has been riding a resources boom driven by Asian demand. Later this week, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes her first trip to Port Moresby. She will be trying to use the trip to change the way Australians think about PNG.

Transcript

ASHLEY HALL: Papua New Guinea's prime minister, Peter O'Neill, wants Australia to help him boost PNG's profile in Asia. Like Australia, PNG has been riding a resources boom driven by Asian demand.

Later this week Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes her first trip to Port Moresby. As Jemima Garrett reports, the PM will be trying to use the trip to change the way Australia and Australians think about PNG.

JEMIMA GARRETT: In many quarter's Papua New Guinea is still seen mainly through the lens of our shared wartime history and Australia's years as a colonial power, but much has changed since then. For the past 10 years PNG has posted economic growth rivalling that of China.

PNG's prime minister, Peter O'Neill, says when the $19 billion ExxonMobil-led PNG LNG project starts operations next year his country's relations with Asia will go to a new level.

PETER O'NEILL: China and Japan and Taiwan have bought the first exports that we are doing: 100 per cent of our gas that we produce. They have indicated that they want to buy more. We are expanding on our current construction of our gas production and we are hoping that we will continue to sell more to them.

JEMIMA GARRETT: Headlines about PNG have been dominated by the Manus Island asylum seeker centre and the political instability leading up to PNG's elections last year.

Manus will be on the agenda for Prime Minister Gillard's two-day visit this week, but so will a new economic partnership treaty that that both prime ministers hope will recast the relationship in more contemporary terms.

New thinking is needed. Prime Minister O'Neill has embarked on a massive program to upgrade health and education and to rebuild PNG's aging infrastructure. He's happy that Australia's aid program is being reoriented around PNG priorities, but in some areas Canberra is moving too slowly and finding the gap filled by China.

PETER O'NEILL: Our traditional partners including AusAID and of course the two international institutions like IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank and ADB (Asian Development Bank), their processes take a number of years to finalise and that is the only setback that we see. And there's an urgency on our part to ensure that the infrastructure work starts now.

And that is why we believe that sourcing funds from places like China, Asian Bank is one of them, we are going to the international market for loans on raising bonds, that is a prospect opportunity that we are working with treasury to look into. And of course there's enough liquidity within our own financial systems here in Papua New Guinea that can be able to also fund the deficit that we are proposing to carry.

JEMIMA GARRETT: In the past six months Prime Minister O'Neill has ramped up relations with the region visiting China and Japan and meeting the Thai prime minister in Port Moresby.

He wants to cap off his five year term by hosting the president of the United States and other APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders at the 2018 APEC summit. For that he's hoping to get substantial support, including with security, from Julia Gillard.

PETER O'NEILL: The Australian Government, we are requesting them to assist us in using their experience when they hosted the meeting in Sydney that they could be able see what sort of issues they had to deal with when they hosted the event. So yes we are communicating with the Australian Prime Minister on that as well.

JEMIMA GARRETT: What sort of response have you had from Julia Gillard? Is she supporting your bid?

PETER O'NEILL: Generally she is supporting our bid. She understands that we are the only country that is left to host the meeting, and Papua New Guinea is an emerging economy that is going from strength to strength. So we are an important player within the Pacific region and we strongly believe that by working together with us in hosting events as such will further enhance the growth that we are experiencing and our role as the hub of the Pacific in the future.